Les Amants de Caracas

This is not a real review, it should be understood more as a collection of impressions on the film.

Very particular film that blends a strange but linear plot with a continuous sense of anxiety and inadequacy. A film that tries in a very bold way to tackle a very particular and very thorny theme and therefore very difficult to talk about without falling into being too terrible and therefore truly unwatchable. In the end the film is entertaining although really harsh and really strangely too bold but in the wrong way to really be considered one of those films that will remain in history. Not so good.

I have seen this film twice; once a few years ago and now again recently. I am torn between giving it a good review or a not so good review and decided on the latter. The film in itself is well made, and Lorenzo Vigas clearly decided not to give it music, and in so doing avoids audience manipulation, and psychologically we are often left in the dark about the two protagonist's motivations. So far so good, and anyone who knows film history both Antonioni and Bresson come to mind. Here again I admire the film for its ambiguity and to confront a troubled relationship between a street hustler ( played excellently by Luis Silva ) and an older man played neutrally and well by Alfredo Castro. We are told very little in the film about the truth of both their pasts and this again I can go along with. A savage and brutal relationship develops between them, and their sexual contact is as hard as the physical violence between them. In the conventional sense there is no ' love ' between them, but a need bordering on dependence on the youth's side and darker motivations on the older man's side. The terrible ending is hard to watch, and in a way that I cannot understand the film seems to endorse the homophobia that it appears to attack. In no way is it a positive film about homosexuality, and this troubled me as it comes from a country that needs to understand homosexuality more than it does. However well made it is, it is so full of hatred towards others and the inner selves of the two main characters that I had to reach the conclusion that it is a negative, and repulsive film. The conclusion is a construct as all films are. A decision made by writers and a director and it offers absolutely no hope at all. It is my personal right to dislike this construct and turn my back on the film. It is not enough to make a film that is well made; but a film that is heartless and cruel in intent towards the natural state of homosexuality repulses me. Pessimistic in the extreme it serves no purpose in our troubled society.

I want to start of by saying this movie has the best production value I've seen in a venezuelan movie, cinematography and sound were great.

The story however I feel it's lacking, it is quite uneventful, one hour into it I was like, ok it's been an hour and nothing has happened yet.

Armando was extremely one dimensional, and I didn't understand why he spoke like that, it was very weird and unnatural. His actions and Elder's dont make sense.

It could have been great but it suffers from the same problem so many venezuelan and foreign movies have, nothing really happens.

Golden Lion winner "From Afar" is a dark romance between two men having huge age gap named Armando and Elder respectively. The film is directional debut of Lorenzo Vigas. The film never promised us to deliver a love story between leads however the connection begins to immerge but love between them have lot of tension and there is always a barrier between them even at a emotional current situation. The tight Cinematography manages to capture some best frames with good performances. From Afar" isn't about a gay romance so much as how the tension between these two men challenges the social barriers surrounding them and lack of score balances the tension so well . The ending is something you didn't expected. It's painful.

A film who I love. Maybe, for impecable Armando of Alfredo Castro. Or , because, as teacher, I know many Elders like the character of Luis Silva. It is not a comfortable film. But an useful one for atmosphere, high craft, for dialogue, reactions and the clash between two different worlds. And, more important, it is support for reflect about loneliness in contemporary world. Short, a great work. Simple, profound, stormy , cold and precise in each detail, giving more than it seems do.